buried

b u r i e d

dispose honour preserve

I want you to bury me
What
You heard me
What are you talking about?
There’s a shovel in the garden shed, it’s old but it works. I want you to take it outside, dig a hole that’s big enough and bury me in it.

Maybe if I burrow down deep enough, I’ll be safe from predators,
I thought.

We bury bodies with the belief that they will be transformed by covering, metamorphosis within the soil, to be carried into the afterlife.

Burial is time-travel, there is something about the earth that makes us believe it can hold things, transport them, fix them in place. Of course, elements of this are true, the ground does hold history, traces of the realities that once played out on and through it. Layer after layer can be peeled back to reveal what was previously covered, a past into present.

In deep geological repositories the world over, radioactive waste is stored in isolated structures that are hoped to be stable for millions of years, with a number of natural and engineered barriers. How can we ensure that the information of what is contained here will be translated to those who might one day uncover it?

“This place is not a place of honour,” reads the text. “No highly esteemed dead is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This message is a warning about danger.”

Calcite white and spiraled

Shell embedded stone

Gathered

Scattered

Sacred

b u r i e d

deep down and dark
light below
warm
wet
swarming
topographies beneath
earths skin
some think she is
a flat surface
to be punctured
pierced
she is a body
rich and runny
peaks and troughs
cavernous
grand
gestating
deep down and dark
light above
bright
blue
buzzing
hold her
she holds
you
a container
a womb
a woman
put away
your
spears